To the Power of One
by Cascade Waters
Summary: How do you define the value and the limits of one?


To the Power of One

Firechild

Rated T (for angst and mild language)

Warnings: Angst abounds! Lots of h, no real c.

Disclaimer: I own only the plot details and the extraneous characters. And half a bottle of rolaids.

A/N: For MLL--not really so much cheery, I know, but heavy with our boys...

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He eased the door open and slipped inside with as little movement as possible, taking care not to let the darkness and the dizziness get the best of him. He felt the accusing rivulets of water running down his face in tandem with the shadows of the rain on the window in the living room. Not daring to try to shake out his rain-soaked hair, he gingerly set his cell phone and keys on the small table by the door, and slid the deadbolt into its housing with a soft 'snikt.' Finally locked within his fortress of solitude, he let his eyes close for a moment and leaned his forehead against the cool surface of the door, shutting the world out but unable to stop the flood of images that had been battering mercilessly against his defenses for the past several hours. Like the storm outside, the too-fresh memories pounded and crashed and broke, only to re-form and come at him again. Only now, only here, only alone in the silence and shadows could he allow the tide to carry him to the edge of the world.

"Good to see you're in one piece."

He jumped, startled, and reflex had his gun halfway out of its holster before he recognized the voice.

"Charlie!" He tried to regain control of his ragged breathing, using the simple motion of slipping his weapon back into its sheath as a cover for his shaking hands. As if he didn't already have enough horror on his mind, now to imagine how close he had come to shooting his own brother…

He had to admit, he was a little touched that Charlie had waited up for him when he hadn't returned to their 'camp-in;' to his own chagrin, he'd actually forgotten that his brother was staying here tonight. Don was also more exhausted than he realized--he didn't hear Charlie rise from the chair in the corner of the living room, where he had been sitting for nearly five hours, watching the door and waiting by the phone, praying for his older brother to come home or to at least return any one of the mathematician's increasingly anxious voice messages. The agent didn't know his brother was behind him until the younger man asked softly, "Are you okay?"

Time to play 'Distract the Genius.' Don mustered up a thin grin. "Yeah, Charlie, I'm fine. I'm even gonna be able to wash and wear these pants again." The shirt, on the other hand… Rocks and gravel, concrete and glass cut through cotton just as enthusiastically as bullets; the Bureau-issue jacket hid the tattered fabric and the blood, for which the older brother was grateful. In this line of work, if you went home with all of your parts more or less where God had put them, you considered it a decent go. But Charlie didn't need to know that.

So, it had been that kind of night. Charlie had figured as much when, worried, he had finally lost the battle with his better judgment and had turned on his brother's television to find that every local news station was covering a single event in progress, and though actual information was sketchy at best, even from the aerial views being fed from the news choppers, Charlie could just make out the yellow FBI on the backs of the jackets below. If the cameras had been any closer to the action, Charlie was sure he would have been able to pick out his brother, most likely on the front line, just from his stance. The media had garnered surprisingly little information about what was actually happening, which was likely a blessing to Charlie, but they had reported gunfire and a possible series of explosions. He'd had to fight the intense urge to call a cab or just start running and show up at the scene, but even he had had enough common sense to realize that he would only have been in the way and that his brother hadn't needed a distraction. Not having his regular team with him would be enough of a distraction for Don.

But that had been then, there, in that place, in the midst of an unknown battle; this was now, here, in this place, in the war being fought behind his brother's eyes.

"Why don't you go take your shoes off, wash up some. Let me find you something to eat."

"Huh?" Don shook his head to clear it and looked up at his brother from the side. "Oh… no, thanks, it's okay, really not hungry." He tried to contemplate working up the energy to take off his shoes, but decided that was overdoing it. When he didn't move from his spot by the door, though, his brother peered at him more closely.

"Isn't there anything I can do?" The whisper was almost plaintive, but even as Don's frustration grew, he could see that Charlie was focused on Don and not on his own satisfaction, and that tempered, barely, the bite that rose into Don's response.

"No, there's nothing you can do, Charlie! Not even perfect little prodigy you!" He was a little proud to see that though the younger man flinched, he did not back down. Don sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Look, I-I'm sorry. I shouldn't have popped off on you. But Charlie, it's, like, four o'clock in the morning--what are you still doing up? I mean, I know we were supposed to hang out and all, and I'm sorry that got messed up, but Charlie, you're a teacher--I mean, you have a job where people fire questions at you, and you have to be coherent enough to answer them! You need to be asleep!"

"Don, it's _after_ four in the morning, and you're just now getting home, and _you_ have a job where people fire _bullets_ at you, and you have to be coherent enough to dodge them! _You_ need to be asleep!" Now Charlie did back off a little, but only to give his brother more room to breathe. "Besides," he said, "you went to work for 'an hour, tops' and next thing I knew the whole city was caught up in some wild story about a bunch of FBI agents in some sort of residential battle zone; if you think teaching is bad, you just wait till tomorrow when suddenly they're all firing their questions at _you_"

Don snorted softly. "Oh, believe me, buddy, it would not be the first time." He closed his eyes and turned to lean his right shoulder against the door as he was assaulted with images from the incident, a problem that had taken a bizarre left turn into tragedy, a travesty that had cost two teenage runaways their lives. When their identities had been nailed down, he'd gone himself to inform their families, only to learn that both sets of parents--one wealthy enough to own three Mercedes and a new H3, the other living a middle-class life in a house that mirrored the one he'd been raised in--seemed to consider their children 'unremarkable' and didn't feel their deaths merited much fuss, especially given the teens' recent rebellion. That alone had nearly sent the agent flying into a rage--or falling to his knees to be sick. Two children had been murdered not just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but apparently, for holding information about that place. It was a house, just a dumb, dusty, empty little house. But that house had mattered to a couple of two-bit terrorists; two young ones, each the other's only friend, had died painfully over a piece of paper they'd found in a drawer and something that didn't exist, had died in pain over a …

No. He wasn't going to go there right now. Not in front of Charlie, who didn't need to see him like that, didn't ever need to see that kind of chink in his armor. He'd have to wait till he was alone, till he could scream into his pillow, till he could flirt with flying apart at the seams without troubling anyone else. Only alone was he safe enough to come that close to the edge; he would never tumble over, of course, because he was convinced that he'd never be able to stop the fall, to get back up and get back to the unworkable workings, but sometimes he just had to toe the edge and let the sharp, cold wind slap him out of the selfishness that whispered for him to lean forward just a little and let go. For now he'd have to pull it together, keep it together. It was the only thing he could do for Charlie.

Don opened his eyes.

Charlie.

Charlie, his little brother who so often irritated him. Charlie, whom Don came dangerously close to taking for granted all too often. Charlie, who knew better than most how to calculate the world but not how to live in it. Charlie, who could write his own ticket, be wherever he wanted to be, doing whatever he wanted to do. Charlie, who was here, now, who had stayed here to wait up for his older brother, who had weathered Don's slough and offered to take care of his lifelong champion. Charlie, who had always thought of his big brother as a hero with some sort of superpower. Charlie, who didn't know his own power. Charlie, who drove his brother crazy with his naiveté and his needs. Charlie, who just wanted to be able to do something to help.

Charlie, who didn't know what he was asking to help with, who never saw the whole problem before he jumped in to try to solve it. Charlie, the baby brother who'd become a man while Don wasn't looking. Charlie, an honored teacher and mentor whose skills and opinions were sought by people who were accustomed to taking action. Charlie, a young man who deserved enough respect from his older brother to be handed some sort of answer rather than just his own head.

Charlie, who understood the dimensions and the limits of the number one but still managed to believe that one could make a difference.

Charlie, who just might be right.

As Don gazed at his brother, his expression unreadable, his thoughts turning to the children who had been erased weeks before their deaths and were tonight mourned by perhaps only one man in all the world, Charlie resigned himself to being shut out once again, wondering briefly if Don could possibly feel the same kind of aching hollowness and helplessness when Charlie shut down on him. The younger man turned and shuffled toward the living room to give his brother space and himself time to wonder why he didn't feel the usual anger at Don's dismissal.

"Wait."

The single word, filled with more than just the rote apology, stopped Charlie in his tracks.

"You want to help. You want to do something."

No mocking, no sneering, just a quiet, ragged request for a confirmation. Charlie half-turned, receptive but still not looking at his brother, and nodded.

Don wearily pushed himself off of the door, eyes narrowed thoughtfully in the dim light as he really saw his brother, and challenged his brother to see what Don was trying to show him.

"I was wrong. You can do something."

Charlie turned to face him, and Don had to swallow a lump at seeing how much passion and compassion his brother could pack into his compact frame, when so many bigger people couldn't grasp even a fraction of that kind of power. Don walked up to his brother, and felt another flare of pride that even when Charlie saw battle-anger in Don's hard gaze just inches from him, he didn't back away. Don raised his index finger, touching the younger man's chest to emphasize each point as he spoke low, almost through his teeth.

"I'll tell you what you can do. You can go to work in a few hours and look out over all the little twits sleeping through your classes, all the little idiots who don't know how lucky they are to be anywhere near you--because they are lucky--who'd be lucky to grow up to be half the man you are, and you can take twenty seconds to be thankful that they made it through high school; and then you can sit around with Larry and Amita and listen to them ramble on about something only they understand, and you can take another twenty seconds to be thankful that they made it to work this morning; and then you can go home tonight and sit across the table from Dad and roll your eyes and bicker with him, and you can take another twenty seconds to be thankful that he's there and that he's making it after Mom and that it matters to him that you came home today and that he's thankful that he knows where you are. One minute, Charlie. You're just one guy, and it's just one minute, and that's maybe all you can do, but that's okay because it's a h of a lot more than most people will."

He waited for a couple of seconds as the ring of his hard tone faded, then he brushed gently past Charlie and went to his room, quietly shutting the bathroom door and turning on the hottest shower the community water heater would allow. Charlie followed just to the bedroom doorway, watching the steam coming out under the bathroom door in fits and starts for a few minutes, and then he padded back to the living room.

When Don emerged twenty minutes later, wearing only midnight-blue FBI jogging pants--having forgotten his vow that his brother would not see him shirtless--and half-heartedly toweling his hair, Charlie came out of the kitchen dressed in one of Don's old button-down Stockton jerseys and gray sweatpants, and he leaned one shoulder against the dividing arch as he studied his brother.

Charlie had turned off the lamp in the living room, leaving the space to the light from the kitchen and the world beyond the window. Every flash of lightning from the building storm outside struck at the bruises and wounds, old and new, that decorated his brother's arms and torso. Every one of those marks told a story in a language that Charlie was suddenly, quietly, desperate to understand. Before he'd even realized that he'd thought them, the words tumbled from his mouth.

"Teach me."

Don's gaze sharpened, wary and concerned, and he dropped his arms. "Pardon?"

Riding for once on feeling rather than findings, Charlie pushed himself off of his leaning shoulder and stood at full height, meeting his brother's eyes. "Teach me--teach me to see what you see. Come on, Don, you need someone who gets it, you need to let someone in, but you won't trust any of us to be there; well, here I am, right here, right now, so let me in, let me get it. Teach me."

Don sighed and turned to drape his towel over the back of his recliner. "Charlie, what could I possibly teach you?"

Fighting a wave of aggravation, Charlie ignored the buzz of his brother's old microwave and the smell of the grilled cheese sandwiches and vegetable soup he'd fixed for the two of them. Just at the moment, he had a more pressing need to fill. "Don't give me that c, Don--you've taught me a lot. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't even be here, and we both know it. Besides, this isn't about what I know--it's about what I don't know, what's weighing on you right now. You can let go, let me in."

When Don didn't respond, didn't look up, didn't even twitch, Charlie sighed and went back into the kitchen, throwing over his shoulder, "You know, you're still human--no matter how hard you try to carry the weight of the world, it will eventually crush you. Even you can't deny the physics of that."

The multi-degreed mathematician busied himself with plates and spoons and napkins, trying to put away the lightning-hot twin flashes of anger and hurt. Don trusted Charlie's math, trusted his numbers and theories and programs, but would his brother ever learn to trust _him_?

"Why does it matter so much to you?"

Charlie whirled, startled, to find Don at the entrance to the kitchen, leaning one battered shoulder just over the spot where Charlie's had rested minutes before, carefully avoiding pressure on the fresh scrapes, slightly singed, that adorned his arm. The younger man nearly lost his grip on the dish towel he'd been using to wipe the grease from his hands, but he went back to that task almost unconsciously as he spoke.

"What kind of--? Because _you_ matter to me! Because every one of those scars, every drop of your blood matters to me." He crossed half of the distance between them in one step, stilling his hands before they could rub the skin from the base of his right ring finger. "Because that one who tries to make a difference matters to me. And the fact that you always seem to be that one, intentionally or not, makes me incredibly proud, but I gotta tell ya, it also scares the h out of me. It reminds me that I've got even odds of losing you to sheer gravity as to a bullet or a bomb."

Don's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

Tossing the towel up to hang over his shoulder, Charlie turned and picked up the plates and bowls, setting them on opposite sides of the tiny kitchen table before resting his palms on the cool pine surface and turning his head to the side to meet his brother's eyes. "You stand, Don--you stand for the weak, the frightened, the lost--but you always seem to stand on an island. Oh, I know out there you're not really alone, I know David and Megan and Colby are with you most of the time and I trust them, maybe more than you do, but they weren't there today, and even if they had been, let's face it, you wouldn't bring them _here_. Here, you're an island, because you won't let anyone in to try to bridge the gap. But Don, what happens when you can't stand anymore? What happens when you fall, when you're here all alone and it all comes crashing down on you? Who'll see you? Who'll put you back together? When gravity finally catches up with you and you go down, who will stand for you?"

Leaving his brother to contemplate that, Charlie straightened and walked back to the refrigerator to get drinks. He passed up the beer in favor of a pitcher of cold tea, working on a hunch. Taking out the pitcher, he set it on the counter and pivoted to reach up for the cup cabinet, drawing up short when he saw his brother setting two familiar-looking paneled drinking glasses next to the pitcher. Not reacting to Charlie's surprise, Don stepped around behind him to open the freezer and pull out an ice tray, returning to drop a few ice cubes into each glass. He poured the tea into the glasses and then took them to the places set on the table, keeping his shoulders hunched and his back to the younger man as he gathered his nerve.

"What do you want me to say, Charlie--you want me to say I'm bulletproof, you want me to promise that I'll never go down?"

"Well, that would be nice, but no." Charlie's thin attempt at humor fell flat, but the genuine feeling behind it remained. He sighed, turning and leaning his lower back and the heels of his palms on the edge of the counter. "Look, I'm not expecting you to be bulletproof; I mean, of course I want you to be careful--I want you, I _need_ you, to physically keep yourself in one piece, to always come back to us. But Don, just like the rest of us when we try to hold up a world, sooner or later you're going to fall, and what you never seem to get is that you are the only one who thinks less of you for being human or for needing other humans. Civilization will not end--_you_ will not end--the moment you lean on someone else, the moment your shell cracks; it won't kill you to let someone else be, well, your Don. But it might just kill you to keep pretending that what's inside that shell can't be touched. Metaphysics is every bit as powerful as tangible science. Eventually, the sky is going to fall, an emotional bullet is going to get through, gravity is going to win; even Kevlar has its limits."

Just when he'd concluded that his brother was going to pretend that Charlie hadn't spoken, the mathematician saw Don raise his head--and meet Charlie's gaze. "Those are some downright terrible odds. You sure you want to take a chance on me?"

There was more power, and more conviction, in Charlie's eyes and in his quiet reply than Don had ever witnessed, in all Charlie's years of shouts and threats and jubilations. "You've risked more on me than I can calculate. You're my hero. You're my brother. The odds have nothing on that."

By something that fell somewhere between unspoken agreement and synergy, the brothers took their seats, each eating a few bites as if they were shoring up. One made a prayer, one made a choice. Thunder rattled the windows and shook the walls, and neither noticed.

"The kids' names were Nick and Joni. He was shot in the knee and the gut; she was shot through a lung. They died holding the stinking blueprint for the house, a blueprint that isn't even right, because a couple of terrorist morons were looking for a door in a house with no interior doors. And no one cares. They were just kids. They just wanted out of the rain. But no one cares; no one wanted them, they didn't count."

Charlie met Don's eyes. "They count. They count on you--they're yours now, and you won't send them back out into the storm to be washed away." He sat up straighter. "You count, Don. You count lives. You count as that one. Sometimes, one is enough." He leaned forward a bit. "Two is bigger. Wanna tell me about Nick and Joni?"

"Well, he was fifteen, she was fourteen..."

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End file.
